NYN | News
The world seems to be arming the Houthi movement (Ansar Allah) one shipment at a time—sometimes through unidentified sources, other times through reckless accusations—and now half a million missing Afghan weapons have been added to the list.
While the United Nations tracks the path of this lost arsenal, the Houthis once again appear among the potential recipients, as if they are the preferred destination for the world’s missing arms.
According to the British network BBC, citing informed sources, nearly half a million weapons obtained by the Taliban after their takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 have either been lost, sold, or smuggled to armed groups.
United Nations estimates indicate that some of these weapons have ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda and the Houthis (Ansar Allah) in Yemen.
According to a former Afghan official, the Taliban seized about one million weapons and pieces of military equipment—most of which had been funded by the United States—following the U.S. withdrawal and the collapse of Afghan government forces.
As the Taliban advanced rapidly at the time, many Afghan soldiers fled or surrendered, leaving behind a massive arsenal of weapons and vehicles. American forces also left behind some military equipment.
This arsenal included American-made assault rifles such as the M4 and M16, along with older weapons used by Afghan forces throughout decades of conflict.
According to the sources, Taliban representatives admitted during a closed meeting of the UN Security Council’s Sanctions Committee in Doha late last year that half of this equipment remains unaccounted for.
The surprise came in a UN report suggesting that some of these weapons have found their way to the Houthis (Ansar Allah) in Yemen.
The report did not explain how rifles traveled from the Hindu Kush mountains to Sana’a, but it seems the Houthis have become accustomed to being accused—sometimes of receiving missiles from Iran, sometimes drones from China and Russia, and now rifles from Afghanistan.
It appears that geography shrinks when accusations are ready, and reason collapses when it is time to blame the Houthis for anything that surfaces on the international radar.
